Thursday, July 8, 2010

Unbridled Spirit of Adventure: Step 143


At first I thought my only connection to Marcy prior to our starting to date was Hector, but it turned out I had actually run into her a few times through cousin Natalie who was also a member of Kander BBG. For those who may not recall, BBG is the female portion of BBYO, which is like CYO or other religious youth groups, only Jewish. Actually, cousin Natalie may have had more to do with our getting together than I originally thought because she was one of those who enjoyed flirting with Hector, but then again cousin Natalie was extremely vivacious and enjoyed flirting with everyone.

Among the members of Kander, and aside from Doe, the closest friend Marcy had was Randee. As previously noted, Randee was a redhead. Not the bright orange redhead of Lucy, or the sultry red of Deborah Kerr, but rather something in between. It was thick, curly, bordering on frizz, and reflected her loud, cheerful, full of life personality.

We often drove the few blocks south and couple blocks east down the tree lined streets to visit with Randee and her family. Her mother had the same sort of effervescent personality with similarly curly, frizzy hair, except it appeared to have vanilla added so it came out to a sort of strawberry blonde, and it was always pulled into a fashionable shape. Her father had limited strands of a similar shade of hair and was a jovial man with a little bit of a paunch. Her younger brother had darker hair but more freckles. He would join Witt AZA in a year and become a close friend of my younger brother.

Now, Mr. F had some sort of regular nine to five job, but he was always a bit of an entrepreneur. That summer he had invested in a fairly large residential housing development. When construction ended for the week there was always a great deal of cleanup to be done. Instead of having expensive contractors do it a common practice was to find day laborers at the rescue mission.

However, Mr. F challenged a few of my friends and me to attempt the backbreaking work for five dollars an hour. That was more than three times what I was making at Wiro, but of course less than whatever he was paying the day laborers. Larry was quick to take up the challenge, and I was reeled in by the appeal of “big money.” One or two others joined us. Maybe M or cousin Jim, that part is not clear in my memory.

If anyone symbolized the exuberant unbridled spirit of adventure Twain gave to us in his depiction of Huckleberry Finn, it was Larry. Not only did he start a fire in the house with his chemistry set and become an amateur Hamm radio operator, long before the internet, he proudly displayed a decal of bullet holes in the lower corner of the windshield on the driver’s side of his late model Impala. By eighteen he would join the Navy and have a career as a sailor traveling around the world.

When we arrived at the construction site that Sunday there were heaps of scrap lumber and piles of broken drywall scattered everywhere among the circle of four family units, which had only been partially erected. We filled wheelbarrows full of wood and hauled it to the dump truck at the side of the road. Taking turns with the sledgehammer we busted up large pieces of drywall, coughing as the dust filled our lungs. Larry made a game of knocking a leg at a time off a daddy longlegs using the sledgehammer.

The best part of the day came when we drove the truck to the dump. Larry claimed to know how to drive it, and except for stripping a couple gears he managed to get it there the first time. It had two sets of gears with a lever to change from one set to the second. I managed to make it through all of them without so much as a single grind on the second trip. We all went home tired, filthy and extremely proud.

Did you have a great teenage adventure? Tell us about it in the comment section.

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